20 February 1999: José Alexandre Xanana Gusmão to Lloyd Axworthy

Meanwhile, Timorese resistance leaders hoped to see Canada champion their cause on the Security Council. Xanana Gusmão, the imprisoned leader of the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), built on the connection established when Canadian Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific) Raymond Chan had visited him in his jail in October 1998. Canada, he wrote, was “now in a unique position to play a lead role in ensuring peace and stability during the upcoming transition in East Timor, which I now believe is inevitable.”